"Originality results from the complexity of influences. One woman I mentored said she was afraid that by reading someone else, his or her style might somehow have a detrimental effect on her writing. I said: 'Don’t worry about that. It doesn’t work that way. Just read. Keep reading and the influences will sort themselves out in their own manner'....The theory of the writing process is no secret. Read something, then write something. Read something else, then write something else, and show, by what you have written, what you have learned. Of course, it’s not quite so simple. The processes of seeing, remembering, and experience with the world must come into play. To continue to test the limits of syntax and diction: that’s what I shoot for."